1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of mobile communications devices such as digital cellular telephones, wireless access protocol (WAP) devices, personal digital assistants, portable web browsers, portable computers, and two-way pagers. Specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for sending information, including but not limited to web-based information, under control through a mobile device to any facsimile (Fax) system.
2. Related Art
As electronic components required for wireless communications devices have reduced in size, portability of such devices has been enhanced. This portability has led to the development of readily portable wireless communications devices, including a host of mobile devices. As mobile wireless digital communication devices have advanced and proliferated, they are being used in a range of applications wherein they are retrieving and displaying information. One of the more widely used mobile wireless digital communication devices which is being used to retrieve and display information is the digital cellular telephone. Other mobile wireless communication devices with such information retrieval and display capability include personal digital assistants (PDA), portable computers, portable web browsers, wireless access protocol (WAP) devices, and two-way pagers.
Digital cellular telephones and other such mobile wireless digital communications devices may incorporate integral display capability. Such integral display capability may reside in a screen, which may be a flat panel display screen typified by such display mechanisms as a liquid crystal display (LCD), a field emission display, also called a flat panel CRT (cathode ray tube), or other display mechanism suitable for generating alphanumeric characters and graphic images recognizable to the user. In order to maximize their portability, mobile digital communications devices may include components selected for combining characteristics such as small size, ruggedness, and low power consumption. This may include the display mechanism components. Such display mechanism components may be thin, have small dimensions, and may also have a relatively small area, including their actual display area.
Mobile wireless digital communications devices may communicate via the Internet with servers. Such servers have the capabilities to communicate with other devices, to access information, and to respond to direction communicated by the mobile devices. Communicating with these servers, the mobile devices have access to all of the information the server may have access to. This capability markedly enhances the scope of utility of mobile devices.
The enhancement of application capability of mobile devices has faced certain constraints. These constraints include an inability of mobile devices to fully and adequately present the information they may access through a server to the user. One limitation of mobile devices contributing to this constraint results from the small screen size of the display mechanism. The small display screens may have a limited area. Consequently, the alphanumeric characters or images that may be displayed thereon may be restricted. The small screen area itself may present a limitation to information display capability. Only so much information may be displayed in any finite area, yet the display screen of a mobile device is small by design. The constraints presented by their small screens may lead users of mobile devices to desire more of the information available through accessible servers than the mobile devices may be capable of presenting.
Mobile devices are carried and used anywhere. Access to information is thus made available anywhere also, including the plethora of information available through servers a mobile device may access. In some circumstances, users of mobile devices may want hard copies of information displayed on their mobile device screen. However, they may be someplace or in some circumstance in which they do not have access to a printer. For example, a salesperson may be in a mobile vehicle, or at a client's site, speaking via a cellular digital telephone with an office across the country, or interacting with a company website. In response to a query regarding the status of an order, they receive from the office or server the shipping dates for two or three items on the mobile device display screen. The user may desire a hard copy of this data. The user is constrained by these circumstances to transcribing the information appearing on the mobile device screen by manual writing. Thus, there may be no convenient way for this user to obtain a hard copy of information displayed on a mobile device screen.
Further, a user of a mobile device may personally be satisfied in a certain circumstance with the limited subset of information, distilled from the great quantity of related information available on the server with which the mobile device is interacting, displayed on his mobile device screen. However, the user may want to send a hard copy of the entire available related information to another destination. For example, the salesperson above may be satisfied with knowing the shipping date the cellular digital telephone screen displays as he drives in a vehicle, but a customer requests a hard copy of the entire order, with prices, quantities, descriptions, shipping charges, shipping destination, insurance data, delivery dates, plants of origin, taxes, and a host of related information from the order document, in addition to the shipping date. Another example may be a teacher on a field trip with a class. In response to a question by a student, the teacher accesses a website via a server over a mobile device such as a cellular telephone or portable web browser. She is able to obtain enough information to answer the question from her mobile device screen, but desires a hard copy of the entire webpage for later reference.
In the prior art, one method of circumventing the problem presented by the limited information display capabilities of mobile devices has been to increase the size of the screens. However, this may consequently increase the size and weight of the mobile devices themselves, with adverse affect on portability.
A second method has been to reduce the size of the images displayed to fit more information on the same small screen area. However, this may be adverse to a user's ability to see the information that is being displayed on the screen of a mobile device. For example, the font size of alphanumeric characters spelling words or forming numbers being displayed on a screen may be reduced, but beyond a certain size reduction, they may become illegible unless a separate magnifier is used. This may be cumbersome and inconvenient, and may lead to other problems, such as losing or forgetting a magnifier, or an inability of different users with incompatible eyesights to use the same magnifier. Further, display screen mechanisms in mobile devices may be limited by their own construction or operating characteristics in their abilities to display information such as very small alphanumeric characters or graphical images with meaningful detail. This limitation may be a factor of their resolution, also limited by their small size in a mobile device.
One method in the prior art of producing hard copies of information displayed on mobile device screens has been simple transcription by hand of the information. For example, a user communicating on a cellular digital telephone while mobile may attempt to write the displayed information down on a notepad. However, this is grossly inconvenient. Handwriting while mobile may prove illegible. Also, pens and/or pads may not be conveniently accessible just when needed most for this purpose. Further, notes so written may easily be misplaced. Further still, using a mobile device while attempting to find a pad and pen, reading the screen, writing a legible transcription of the information displayed on the screen, may be disconcerting. Also, if more information than a few simple lines of data is being accessed, it may be inconvenient to write it all down manually under the best of circumstances.
The problem of generating hard copies of the greater amounts of information available through the server to which mobile devices are connected has been dealt with in the prior art in one way by finding other resources or obtaining assistance from other persons with access to such resources. For example, the teacher desiring a hard copy of a particular webpage accessed via a cellular digital telephone or other mobile device and a server while on a field trip could have to note the uniform resource locator (URL) of the website of interest, find a computer with both Internet and printer access, or a web browser and a printer, access the website in interest a second time from the computer or browser, and have that machine print the website on an associated printer. Alternatively, she could call another person, and if they were available and not otherwise occupied, they could be given the URL identity over the phone and asked to access it, download it, and print it, and then transmit the printed copy by facsimile machine to a facsimile machine the teacher had access to at that location. Another example is the salesperson responding to the request of a customer for a complete copy of the order off of which the status was just reported by a server on the cellular digital telephone or other mobile device screen. He may have to discommunicate with the server and his customer, call someone in his office, who may or may not be available, and describe the needed information and where it can be found, request that they send the specified information to the customer by facsimile transmission, e-mail attachment, or by some similar medium, and have to tell them the customer's facsimile machine telephone number or e-mail address, etc. This solution is inconvenient and inefficient.
Thus, the solutions to the problems of insufficient information on mobile device displays and producing hard copies of either the limited information on the mobile device screens or of the greater amounts of related information from which the mobile device screen display was distilled are inconvenient, inefficient, and impractical.